How to use “Commons” in defending public goods and transforming society

The threat of privatisation of public goods and services in Europe and globally. Experiences from concrete struggles against TTIP, CETA, etc. and other so-called “free trade” agreements in Europe and elsewhere.

A Coordinator of the Public Alternative project in TNI and Reclaiming Public Water Network since 2005. Her latest edited book is Our Public Water Future: The global experience with remunicipalisation (2015).

Reclaiming public services as Commons: strategies for Remunicipalisation and Democratisation

In the past 15 years, there have been at least 235 cases of water remunicipalisation in 37 countries, affecting more than 100 million people. Despite growing evidence failure, promotion of privatisation and PPPs has remained strong as a solution for financing public services and infrastructure. Local authorities are facing a major challenge in how to finance public services and infrastructure without entering into PPPs and other neoliberal options.

11:45-12:00 Break

12:00-13:00 Questions and debate

13:00-14:00 Lunch

14:00-16:30 Parallel seminars on 1) The dangers of extraction – keeping raw materials in the ground; 2) Commons and Cooperatives – and the struggle against privatisation.

Seminar 1: The dangers of extraction – keeping raw materials in the ground

Since early 2000s there have been heavy extraction in South Gobi Desert to the detriment of environment, human communities and animals in this ecologically sensitive region. Traditionally local communities are nomadic herders roaming with their animals through thin pastures of the Gobi. Large mining corporations have taken away not only pastures but most importantly the life sustaining water resources in this desert environment. The corporation do not recognize traditional rights of indigenous population extracting underground water at 870 m₃ per second rate for their mega mines.

Greenland is rich in raw materials and some Greenland politicians wish to make the most of this to the benefit of the economy. Plans for extraction include extraction of uranium and fossil oil. What are the consequences of this for the environment, for the climate and for the population?

Seminar 2: Commons and Cooperatives – and the struggle against privatisation?

What can bring the concept of Commons into the Labour Movement? Chantal Delmas, France, co-coordinator of the project of “Commons” in Transform!Europe network, and on social re-appropriation in Espaces Marx (France)

How can the labour movement fight against “There Is No Alternative”? The question of ownership in the private and public sector. May we rethink institutions and the question of state through the concept of Commons?

How to create Community from the perspective of indigenous women. How does the Community relate to society as a whole? How can communities improve the role of indigenous women?

The Commons in the Core Economy? Potential Clues from the Mondragon Cooperative Experience, Fred Freundlich, Basque Country, USA and Spain, a professor of cooperative enterprise and cofounder of a masters’ program on the social economy at the Faculty of Business, Mondragon University in the Basque Country of Spain.

Mondragon is a large, integrated network of over 100 worker cooperatives in many sectors. Over 50 years of experience, Mondragon has developed a perspective on the Commons and the enterprise that many people think is important to social change movements. This perspective is based on broad worker ownership in the core economy within a framework of solidarity and intercooperation among enterprises.